Pages

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Review: Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

Publishing Date: July 10, 2012

Publisher: MTV Books

Pages: 336

My Rating: Abandoned (0 of 5 stars)

Summary (from Goodreads):Heaven Beach, South Carolina, is anything but, if you live at the low-rent end of town. All her life, Leah Jones has been the grown-up in her family, while her mother moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, letting any available money slip out of her hands. At school, they may diss Leah as trash, but she’s the one who negotiates with the landlord when the rent’s not paid. At fourteen, she’s the one who gets a job at the nearby airstrip.

But there’s one way Leah can escape reality. Saving every penny she can, she begs quiet Mr. Hall, who runs an aerial banner-advertising business at the airstrip and also offers flight lessons, to take her up just once. Leaving the trailer park far beneath her and swooping out over the sea is a rush greater than anything she’s ever experienced, and when Mr. Hall offers to give her cut-rate flight lessons, she feels ready to touch the sky.

By the time she’s a high school senior, Leah has become a good enough pilot that Mr. Hall offers her a job flying a banner plane. It seems like a dream come true . . . but turns out to be just as fleeting as any dream. Mr. Hall dies suddenly, leaving everything he owned in the hands of his teenage sons: golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson. And they’re determined to keep the banner planes flying.

Though Leah has crushed on Grayson for years, she’s leery of getting involved in what now seems like a doomed business—until Grayson betrays her by digging up her worst secret. Holding it over her head, he forces her to fly for secret reasons of his own, reasons involving Alec. Now Leah finds herself drawn into a battle between brothers—and the consequences could be deadly.

Welp. I'm done. I've hit my stupid limit for the year.

And it's the first week of January.

No. Just no. Let me put that in Spanish for you:

No.

My philosophy is that a book should always, always, always equal or exceed its cover in awesomeness. This book did not even come close.

Wow. This is my first abandoned book. Ever. Which is saying a lot. No matter how much I loathe a book, I usually try to manage through until the end of the novel.

So... now that we have a picture of just how much I did not like this book, let's get to why.

First- Sex references. They were everywhere. Not just here and there, not just occasionally, but everywhere. This is pretty much the main reason that I abandoned the book. I won't tolerate that. I kept thinking Okay, this is going to get better in a second. She'll get off of it. But no. She'll take breaks sometimes, but the references are the norm, not vice versa. Seriously, what happened to marriage, or morality for that matter?

Second- Drugs/Cigarettes/Cursing. Too much of it for my tastes. There wasn't a ton of cursing, but there was a lot of underage drinking, which I highly disapprove of, as well as some references to drugs other than alcoholic beverages.

Third- Pure Stupidity. If I wasn't completely disgusted at this book for reasons 1 or 2, then I was either really bored with lack of plot or the sheer stupidity of the story line that did somewhat exist. The sentence, "Heeeeeeey." was actually in a single conversation 3 times. THREE. TIMES. Just... no.

Fourth- Severe lack of adrenaline/adventure. When I picked this up, I was thinking, Yay! A story about flying and adrenaline! But no. When I did finally make it to a scene where she flies the plane, which took forever to get to, it was entirely boring. Whatever "danger" she felt she was in, she definitely didn't show it. She may have felt a bit apprehensive, but there was an extreme lack of strong emotion to me. This book was not even remotely centered on the adrenaline of flying, but rather her whining the entire. time.

So, I sincerely apologize if I just insulted one of your favorite books, but this novel insulted both my morals and my intellect. I was not going to leave that unsaid.

So, first book of 2013. Way to kick off the year. I can safely say that Jennifer Echols and I will not be meeting again.